The prosecutor, John Durham, a career DoJ attorney from Connecticut, has already been investigating the CIA's destruction of torture video tapes, and has been described by AP as "one of the nation’s most relentless prosecutors."

The IG's 122-page report details the beating and death of detainees, threats of violence, death and sexual assault to their family members, and other techniques used by U.S. government interrogators that were "inconsistent with the public policy positions that the U.S. has taken regarding human rights."

Shortly after the announcement today, U.S. House Judiciary chair John Conyers (D-MI) and subcommittee chair Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) released a statement applauding the appointment of the Special Prosecutor and calling for a 'broad mandate' to prosecute not just 'frontline personnel,' but also the 'policymakers and lawyers' who created the "conditions where such absues were all but inevitable to occur."

"Seeking out only the low-level actors in a conspiracy to torture detainees will bring neither justice nor restored standing to our nation," says Nadler in the statement (posted in full below)...

From Conyers' comments: "The Obama Administration also deserves praise for the release of the 2004 CIA Inspector General report as well as related DOJ memos. These materials are truly disturbing, including the CIA's basic conclusion that 'unauthorized, improvised, inhumane, and undocumented detention and interrogation techniques were used' in its program. Reading about misdeeds such as threats to kill a detainees' children or the staging of mock executions leaves us appalled. ... The gruesome acts described in today's report did not happen in a vacuum. It would not be fair or just for frontline personnel to be held accountable while the policymakers and lawyers escape scrutiny after creating and approving conditions where such abuses were all but inevitable to occur."

From Nadler: "I applaud the Attorney General for this first step. But, we must go further. As I have said for many months, it is vital that this special counsel be given a broad mandate to investigate these abuses, to follow the evidence where it leads, and to prosecute where warranted. This must be a robust mission to gather any and all evidence without predetermination of where it may lead. Seeking out only the low-level actors in a conspiracy to torture detainees will bring neither justice nor restored standing to our nation."

UPDATE: Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) similarly call for investigation of those who created the torture policies, in addition to those those who violated the law while carrying them out. Details here...

The joint Conyers/Nadler press release follows in full below...

Monday, August 24, 2009

Conyers and Nadler Applaud Appointment of Special ProsecutorPolicymakers and Lawyers Must Also Be Held to Account

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) and Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) issued the following statements in response to the Department of Justice decision to appoint a special prosecutor to review certain cases of alleged abuse of detainees.

"I applaud the Attorney General's decision to appoint a special US Attorney to review the interrogation abuse cases that were rejected for prosecution by George Bush's Justice Department," said Conyers. "The Obama Administration also deserves praise for the release of the 2004 CIA Inspector General report as well as related DOJ memos. These materials are truly disturbing, including the CIA's basic conclusion that 'unauthorized, improvised, inhumane, and undocumented detention and interrogation techniques were used' in its program. Reading about misdeeds such as threats to kill a detainees' children or the staging of mock executions leaves us appalled.

"Today's release --- even of these still heavily redacted materials --- is thus an important step toward restoring the rule of law in this country, and rebuilding our credibility around the world. But much more remains to be done. The gruesome acts described in today's report did not happen in a vacuum. It would not be fair or just for frontline personnel to be held accountable while the policymakers and lawyers escape scrutiny after creating and approving conditions where such abuses were all but inevitable to occur.

"I have long believed that Department rules require a special counsel to review the entire interrogation program to determine if any crimes were committed. An independent and bipartisan commission should also be convened to evaluate the broader issues raised by the Bush Administration's brutal torture program."

"The CIA Inspector General's report on interrogation practices under the Bush administration is a disturbing record of abuse that details why this must never happen again and why action on the part of the Justice Department is essential," said Nadler. "Today's news that the Attorney General has listened to our many requests and is poised to appoint a special counsel is very much welcome. I applaud the Attorney General for this first step. But, we must go further. As I have said for many months, it is vital that this special counsel be given a broad mandate to investigate these abuses, to follow the evidence where it leads, and to prosecute where warranted. This must be a robust mission to gather any and all evidence without predetermination of where it may lead. Seeking out only the low-level actors in a conspiracy to torture detainees will bring neither justice nor restored standing to our nation."

###

UPDATE 8/26/09:Glenn Greenwald details Holder's announcement, and argues that it amounts to a "review", rather than a special prosecution, based on little more than the "Abu Ghraib model" where low-level officials may be held accountable, but not those who put the illegal policies in place to start with...

Attorney General Eric Holder today confirmed what has been suspected for many weeks: he has ordered what he calls "a preliminary review into whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of specific detainees at overseas locations." Holder's decision does not amount to the appointment of a Special Prosecutor, since a preliminary review is used, as he emphasized, "to gather information to determine whether there is sufficient predication to warrant a full investigation of a matter." More important, the scope of the "review" is limited at the outset to those who failed to "act in good faith and within the scope of legal guidance" --- meaning only those interrogators and other officials who exceeded the torture limits which John Yoo and Jay Bybee approved. Those who, with good faith, tortured within the limits of the OLC memos will "be protected from legal jeopardy" (the full Holder statement is here).

1. I question whether an investigation is truly independent when a current DOJ employee is selected to be a special prosecutor.

2. If the investigation is limited to instances, such as threats to execute, that exceeded the abominable OLC torture memos, the impact will be worse than no prosecutions. It's let's prosecute "the bad apples" as we saw with Abu Ghraib.

3. The Bybee/Yoo memos should not provide a legal standard by which we determine whether to prosecute. To the contrary, those memos should furnish the basis for prosecution of their authors and prosecution ofthose (Cheney/Addington) under whose direction the torture memos were prepared.

4. I'd have been far more impressed with the Conyers/Nadler press release if they had added, and, oh, by the way, we're filing articles of impeachment against Judge Bybee.

While it is helpful to call on the DOJ to appoint "special counsel to review the entire interrogation program to determine if any crimes were committed," the truth is that both Conyers and Nadler are in a position to expedite matters by filing articles of impeachment against Bybee.

On a somewhat unrelated note, please post the full video of Sibel Edmonds' deposition which has just been released. What has been posted on this link, http://newsdemocrat.com/...D=128898&TM=58793.69 , is a flash video (flash doesn't work on everyones computer). People can distribute the video on bitorrent so people can download the full video faster all over the world.

Skip. Tunga has heard through a friend of a friend that Karl Roves entire private digital video catalog of the perverted proclivities provided by those troopers "just following orders"at aBu Garab is now available on Craigs list for a song.

Possibly as low as a one way flight on OMG airlines to Paraguay.

Have you heard this also or is Tunga beating down the wrong path of least resistance?

And then I fulfilled my obligation, as a former FBI contractor who has signed various non-disclosure agreements, to inform the FBI and the Department of Justice that I have been requested to provide my testimony and I am supposed to let you know. They had a day or so to respond. They passed the deadline. And after the deadline, they came back with some whimsical unconstitutional warning saying that under the non-disclose agreement, the FBI and the Department of Justice needed 30 days to review what I was about to testify. I had the attorneys check that and it turned out this is not legal, because oral testimony cannot be submitted—you don’t know what is going to be asked in court. Therefore, the warning they gave me was unconstitutional and not legal. They didn’t have any legal grounds to stop me from testifying, so I went and, under oath, during this five-hour long deposition, answered all the questions, and talked about everything I knew that had to do with Congressional corruption cases that involved various Turkish entities.

In announcing the appointment of this Republican prosecutor, Holder stated:

“I have made it clear in the past that the Department of Justice will not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees. I want to reiterate that point today, and to underscore the fact that this preliminary review will not focus on those individuals.”

Scott Horton observes, as I have previously, that the decision to torture predated the torture memos. "These memos were solicited and written as get-out-of-jail cards to get CIA interrogators, at least some of whom raised concerns about the legality of what was being done, to use the new techniques."

So tell me something, Mr. Holder, how can memos that were prepared as a bad faith, after-the-fact rationalization be relied upon in good faith?

Why did you not release the OLC report which slams the deficiencies of these legal sophistries you now rely upon to evade accountability?

Obama and Holder are violating their oath of office --- to faithfully execute the law.

It seems that, like the public option, campaign promises to restore the rule of law were nothing more than hot air.

Well, and it also assumes that one can torture in good faith, and, unless you happen to be a machine, I don't think it's possible to make a case for that... even if you did not torture until the boss gave you some bogus legal opinion to make it seem to the weak-minded that you were torturing in good faith.

And, so, Ernie, you are 100% correct. Obama and Holder have been and still are carrying on with the un-Constitutional policies of the last administration, and in breach of their oaths.

The only sign of "good faith" lurking in this mess is if you read it that there were no good faith actors in the torturing and that all those involved, thereby, will end up being prosecuted through this little maneuver... if Durham will make so bold as to take the heat off of them with such a flagrant observance of The Rule of Law.

If (YOU) anyone with a 5th grade education and average intelligence thinks these loser criminals are going to implicate themselves, then YOU do not have a clue about how the Illuminati has been running this country and owns your fcking ace.

You can no longer apply the New World Order - Military Industrial Congressional Complex brainwashed model of logic to this sham of Democracy and called the US Federal government and expect a different result.

All the corrupted gov agencies, departments, and branches that are completely controlled by these super rich US elite lying anti-enviro bastard self serving rulers will cuntinue to protect themselves and their interests to the best of their ability.

This is their plan but go ahead and cuntinue to watch the right hand of the US corporate mass media they control so their left hand can do WHATEVER IT WANTS as it has for decades.

I re-read my last colorful post and want to make clear that I am not trying to insult anyone at Bradblog. On the contrary, I actually love this website, the intellectual exchange of information, and the tireless work of Brad and others following our broken system of US elections etc.

I have been studying what is going on for sometime now and will do anything to wake people up less becoming a politicians with a target on my head to help lead the mislead US majority who generally grasp at straws at the end of the day about what to do.

An American majority must understood that their sheer numbers could cause a change effective almost immediately that could correct this ugly world scenary imposed by these 5% elites.

Unfortunately, most Americans are not nearly up to speed, trapped in their own debt enslavement trying to get by, or their own personal twisted rationalization how this doesn't effect them to even conceptualize what needs to be done.

However, I really believe many at Bradblog have their eye on the ball.

Even if the necessary revolutionary dots are not yet connected to end the rule of these New World Order Imperialist oil-coal barons, bankers, and defense contractors that run our country and control the US military yet , I think Bradbloggers can join together in the light of truth.

Grizzly Bear Dancer...Your two comments are sadly spot on, just as Ernest's and 99's are.
I do however believe in a universal, karmic force that handles unjust situations such as this country is experiencing. That's where I place my optimism. I appeal to that karmic reciprocating force daily in my actions and thoughts and I see it at work.
I hope, albeit far fetched that Holder and the DOJ are compelled to fully prosecute to the highest degree...all the way into the Whitehouse. I hope they're compelled by the force of our thoughts and the force of Justice in the universe. It's a longshot...but surely possible from where I sit.

This torture prosecution is out of our hands (as if we ever had a say in the first place).
Personally it is too depressing to concede victory to the lying, thieving oligarchy of fat cat pimps.
We're still in the game as it were...although it's late in the 4th quarter and we're losing bigtime.

I'm not investing a lot of emotional energy in these prosecutions...I am however holding out hope that Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, Yoo, Gonzo and all of the knowing crooks, will sit at the table of karma to dine on the pile of shit they've dealt.

I'm afraid I've lost all faith in Mr. Conyers. If he's applauding, that means the fix is in. The corruption is "too big to fail" in the eyes of the porkers at the trough. Nonetheless, I'm hoping for an Alexander Butterfield, and someone with the sense to ask the right questions of him, questions that he will not dare lie in response to. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one...

Todd responded by alleging that even if journalists reported more vigorously on the issue, it was unlikely that the organization would ever be held accountable. He said it would turn into "a political food fight" where "Congress would not be able to get any prosecutions done," suggesting that Blackwater would inevitably find a way to get off the hook.

i think the cia runs the country and thats why it doesnt matter what party is in power

You're getting warmer, Karen! Keep looking - the CIA is but one tendril of the Medusa that has the US, and dangerously, nearly the rest of the world too, in its fetid grasp. It's gonna take a Steven Kingian effort to excise this horrid tumor from our society. I fear we're going to have to destroy the village in order to save it. I hate to say it, but it appears that the BAD GUYS have won, and they'll soon have their way by ending life on this planet as we know it. Oh well...

Yeh these bastards are insulated beyond belief. Why do you think Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Rice and all the other fcking Bushit Administration criminals are still free to live, work, and openly offer their opinions nationally throughout the channels of the corporate US media they control? THEY HAVE NO CONCERN. The Obama Administration is their people.

The Military Industrial CONGRESSIONAL Complex, a named coined by a 5 star WWII general turn President named Dwight D. Eisenhower coined the phase in his concerns of what he saw developing as a US industrial arms war machine. He expressed that he foresaw that a combination of greed and unfit individuals would carelessly lead the US into war, abuse US war powers, and take control of our nation LEFT UNCHECKED.

Now we have this big money corporate military sellout Congress after the cover-up of the Pentagon war event bombings known as 9-11 to authorize the extradinary amounts of money, arms, and waging of illegal wars.

Could anyone ever imagine how much cash is still being pumped into promoting the muslim terrorist lies of the 3 World Trade Center bombings? Military high-tech nanothermite cutter charges that left their signature on steel samples has been positively identified in a peer reviewed paper but what corporate US mass media has this been published in? Silence of course. Learn the truth at ARCHITECTS AND ENGINEERS FOR 9-11 TRUTH. www.ae911truth.org

The greedy loser criminal bankers at the Federal Reserve cannot and will not ever be held accountable by an UNDERDOG (fictional cartoon character) even if this said person existed because it is not a government entity no more than the unaccountable BLACKWATER merchant killers (not apart of the US military) in Afganistan. But the Afgan heroin trade is grow'in!!!

That's who runs our money system, prints US dollars all at their cost and of course legally taxes the US people. These unregulated uknown bankers are the big money deciders of the corporation known and in turn the fascist sphere of influence on the world. They must be stripped of this power with safeguards to never be able to exert their control on the country of the United States.

f (YOU) anyone with a 5th grade education and average intelligence thinks these loser criminals are going to implicate themselves...

__________________________

But Cheney has already implicated himself. He has repeatedly stated publicly that he authorized water boarding. He's brazen about it precisely because he knows Obama/Holder lack the scroats to prosecute him.

Thank you for taking my words to task. What I actually meant was not that these insulated New World Order lying criminal murderers like fomer Haliburton contractor head turn VP Dick Cheney would not ever admit their guilt for any of their treasonous illegal acts, BUT that this U.S. ruling class HAS NOT ever faced prosecution let alone conviction and sentencing in a U.S. or World court.

While Architects and Engineers at www.ae911truth.org have not and do not speculate on who is responsible for taking down the 3 World Trade Towers buildings bombed on 9-11 or the orchestrated US corporate mass media cover up in conjuction with the government, they do provide the many levels of evidence to support controlled demolition. They also provide closed case evidence for the use of high tech miilitary thermate cutter charges.

I personally have no problem implying the Bushit Administration was resposible for the deaths of Americans by taking down the World Towers on 9-11 to get Americans and world people behind their "war on terror" campaign because I know all about these greedy fcking killers.

These Illuminati New World Order anti-environmentalists haven't gone down for their staged false flag miitary attack and the truth is not even the commonly accepted story. They have remain in control of the U.S. along with their new puppet president in place. In 2009, the Military Industrial Congressional Complex is sitting tall and all the other governmemt's corrupted agencies have "their" people in place so it could look better.

The only positive point I can add today is that I like Blue Hawk in his post agree that KARMA CAN BE A REAL BITCH. I can also admit that I have sent out prayers to the spirits of those who died on 9-11 and call on them to help expose these traitors and so can you.

I watched in horrified awe as the traitors to America used patriotism to herd the sheep for the slaughter....And our fear fed, unthinking population swallowed that force fed fear whole.
We were sold a fear based world view; by chicken hearted greedy bastards who traded us out for filthy lucre.

It's been said that "We get the government we deserve". Well it's here, we deserve it.

For those of us who are awakened and want better, I truly don't know what the next step is. There is a great wall of ignorance that most folks cling to with a passion...I have no idea how to surmount that.
Places like Bradblog keep us informed...but too many people don't want to know.

Some of the best plans in history were drawn by people with leadership ability who simply had the knowledge and facts of their current situation. Then they improvised as they went along.

Since the fragile humans have appeared on earth, they have proven that when prodded a little bit that the helpless herd could be easily manipulated, by deamonizing a perceived ememy.

Over and over and over whatever their minds are fed as long as you can attach a face. The unreal becomes real and fcking stereo-typed lie will become truth.

This weakness has been exploited by the Illuminati New World Order loser neo-con PROJECT FOR A NEW CENTURY participant big money leaders.
This creature is the #1 danger to all life on earth, BUT until they either destroy this place we all live with bombs, wars, or pollution including green house causing CO2 gases heating up the planet like a clay oven, we are still all connected.

Even the most uneducated, unintelligent man living on garbage who can be found in most major U.S. cities knows the super rich devils are running the kingdom. Truth just has to become truth again.

When the whole truth about 9-11 and how control of their corporate mass media made it possible, it will unify a majority of Americans and world people like a Carl Rove propaganda story of lies typical during his 8 year tenure in the George W. Bush administration. Then the shake up will occur. You better bet your life it is coming sooner than later.